Father Esteban took a huge pinch of snuff, examined
Miss Keene attentively, and smiled a sad smile. The next day he
begged Hurlstone to take a volume of old music to Miss Keene with his
compliments. Hurlstone did so, and for some reason exerted himself to be
agreeable. As he made no allusion to her rudeness, she presumed he did
not know of it, and speedily forgot it herself. When he suggested a
return visit to the boy choir, with whom he occasionally practiced, she
blushed and feared she had scarcely the time. But she came with Mrs.
Markham, some consciousness, and a visible color!
And then, almost without her knowing how or why, and entirely unexpected
and unheralded, came a day so strangely and unconsciously happy, so
innocently sweet and joyous, that it seemed as if all the other days
of her exile had only gone before to create it, and as if it--and it
alone--were a sufficient reason for her being there. A day full of
gentle intimations, laughing suggestions, childlike surprises and
awakenings; a day delicious for the very incompleteness of its vague
happiness. And this remarkable day was simply marked in Mrs. Markham's
diary as follows:--"Went with E.
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